Ati Nurbaiti and Santi W.E. Soekanto, Jakarta – Fifteen-year-old Ranti wept with pain when an elderly man deflowered her at a brothel in Jakarta, but she managed to stop crying upon being told he would pay her Rp 700,000 (US$106).
As it turned out, she received only Rp 50,000 because most of the money went to her "Mama Yuyun" who took her and her friend Santi as new additions into the collection of young girls between the ages of 14 to 20 at her brothel in the Kota downtown area. Most of the "guests" here are men aged about 35 years or older, who believe sleeping with teenage girls revive their virility and signs of manhood.
The "Mama" insisted most of the money went to Ranti's father and a procurer who brought the girls to Jakarta from a small West Java village where parents, aunts and uncles, and even village officials prepare girls for prostitution at an early age. Some mothers prefer to have their daughters work as prostitutes rather than see them "laze around" at home.
"He [the elderly first client] told me that if I did it often enough, it wouldn't hurt any more," Ranti told a researcher commissioned by the International Program of the Elimination of Child Labor (IPEC), which is an arm of the International Labor Organization.
"Every guest pays Mama between Rp 75,000 and Rp 100,000 for a date of up to three hours. I didn't know how much I made because Mama took some of it for my room and board," Ranti said.
Ranti went home when she felt she could no longer tolerate clients who demanded that she do "perverse things", but she could not stay home for too long because her mother nagged her to return and make money. She moved to another brothel, where she got her first experience of venereal disease. "I felt hot flashes, lots of pain down there," she said.
Ranti went back home, and her mother took her to a doctor who gave her three injections. Within two weeks, she recovered, and her mother again sent her away.
Santi recounted how her parents and elder sister Ira talked her out of marriage with a poor mechanic when she was 14. Instead, Ira took her to a procurer known by many locals as Pak Rahmat who then brought them both to Jakarta.
"I knew I would get a lot of money because I was still a virgin, unlike Ira who was already divorced," Santi said. "As far as I know, my father received Rp 1 million from Pak Rahmat for allowing him to take me with him."
Santi's father then took the girl to the village official, who took note of the brothel that Santi was being sent to and her alias. "When I had my first guest, I cried, because he was so rough," Santi said. "A lot of blood came out of me."
The Mama gave her two days respite, before making her return to work where she met her second guest, a 50-year-old man who wanted to be called Oom Roy and bought Santi clothes and gave her big tips on subsequent visits.
Every month, Santi's parents came to collect up to Rp 750,000 from her. "I am not afraid of the 'dirty disease' because I take herbal concoctions and wash myself after receiving guests."
Ranti and Santi were among the seven prostituted children studied by the researchers, who also studied five brothel owners, seven customers, 15 friends and relatives of the prostituted children and eight procurers in Greater Jakarta, Indramayu in West Java, Surabaya and Banyuwangi in East Java.
The ILO adopted in June the International Convention No. 182 on the elimination of the worst forms of child labor, which it defines as, among other things, "the use, procuring or offering of a child for prostitution, for the production of pornography or for pornographic performances". Schools
School is, of course, out of the picture now for Ranti, Santi and others like her. But in some areas, school has become a nonoption, no matter how temporarily, for children simply because there are no schools.
Some 15,000 children in the troubled regencies of East Aceh, North Aceh and Pidie could not go back to class in the new academic year that began on July 19 because around 110 schools were burned down in conflicts between the military and the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM).
Some Rp 15 billion would be needed to rebuild and repair the torched buildings, Governor Syamsuddin Mahmud said. But every second of precious time is being wasted and formal classes will not be resumed for some time.
The list of child victims of violence is long. The Foundation of Indonesian Children's Welfare (YKAI) says 64 children between the ages of six and 18 were killed in the Santa Cruz military shooting in Dili, East Timor, in 1991.
In the clash between military personnel and followers of Warsidi, the leader of a religious sect, 66 children between the ages of one and 18 allegedly died.
In the May 1998 riots in Jakarta, one 13 year old and one eight-month-old infant died of gunshot wounds, while 20 other children between the ages of 12 and 17 died in burning buildings.
In the military shooting in Simpang KKA, Lhokseumawe, Aceh, on May 3, 1999, eight children between the ages of six and 17 died of gunshot wounds, while 22 others were seriously injured. During the unrest on May 15, 1999, in Ambon, two children reportedly died of gunshot wounds.
Child prostitutes and child victims of violence are indeed touchy subjects, but activist Panji Putranto of IPEC pleads for attention for the majority of children whose fate is never reported by the media. Some 70 percent of child workers labor long and hard in rural areas, where their economic contribution to their families is taken for granted.
These children do not go to school, but work in the fields, do chores at home and simply re-tread the path to poverty that their parents took before them. The domestic child workers, at the tender age of 10, are taken to the homes of richer folks where they serve their days away without adequate rest or play, which is their right.
There are organizations and activists who strive to assist the child prostitutes and street children, but the young people in rural areas are often not as lucky. They will grow up and struggle to escape poverty by seeking menial jobs in Malaysia, Saudi Arabia or Hong Kong.
One of the reasons there are no programs to help the silent majority is that people simply do not see any problems, Panji said. "How can you raise noise about a problem which people think is not a problem?" Panji said. "Many people employ children as their servants and do not see it is wrong."